


Alone

by Cheylouwho



Category: South Park
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Timeline, Family Loss, Gen, theyre 10 in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 17:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17750498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cheylouwho/pseuds/Cheylouwho
Summary: Clyde just can't seem to cope with all the changes going on around him since his mother passed away.





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I started this one way back in October of 2017 rip..... I originally intended it to be written for the prompt "adapt" from the fandom writing challenge blog but then I never got around to finishing this until now so here we go a little late than never!

It had been two weeks now, exactly.

Clyde knew this because he’d been quietly marking his calendar.

It wasn’t like when he counted down to the end of the school year, or to his birthday, or to that time the Tucker family let him go on a road trip with them. It was a completely different feeling every time he crossed off another day in the purple sharpie he kept on the desk.

Two weeks ago, his mother had died.

The first few days were more of disbelief than anything. He remembered his friend’s desperate attempts to cheer him up, the funeral, and the lawsuit. It wasn’t real, he had told himself, because if it was real it meant he was going to have to forget everything he ever knew and start over again. The next few smudged, purple crosses on the calendar were filled with frustration and anger as it finally hit him that there was no changing what had happened. He’d slammed the doors, screamed, cried, flipped off the sky, rebelled. The toilet seats remained up. The dishes stayed in the sink, unwashed. He didn’t comb his hair. Anything and everything she hated, he did. Maybe if he annoyed her enough, she’d come storming into his bedroom and scold him until he got up and did it.

But no, there was nothing.

Now, two weeks later, he was staring at neat rows of purple, fingers trembling as he made that fourteenth mark. This is what _he_ did. This was _his_ fault. And god, he wasn’t going to let himself forget it.

Clyde pouted his lip as he set the marker back down on the desk, trying not to stare at it too long as he rubbed at his eyes with a little yawn. It was too late in the day to let himself cry again. He’d never do it in front of his friends; he was enough of a crybaby at school already. If they knew how upset he was over this, he’d never hear the end of it. Probably. He didn't know. It was hard to tell.

He turned quietly to his closet, shuffling over as he pulled his shirt overhead and tossed it on the floor. There was a nice pile of laundry accumulating now, but his dad hadn’t said anything about it yet. In fact, he’d hardly said anything at all since it happened. It was like he’d completely checked out of the situation. His sister Claire had been no better.

It was Clyde Donovan, ten years old, alone.

With a frustrated sigh he kicked at the pile, watching as the mound of fabric tumbled into less of a pile and more of a blob. Who cared? Not him. He grabbed the pajamas he’d thrown over his desk chair the night before and quickly dressed, tiptoeing towards his bedroom door. It wasn’t that late, hardly 10 o’clock, but the house was dead silent as he pushed it open, staring out into the dark hallway. He couldn’t hear anything. Dad and Claire must have gone to bed.

He wanted to scream. He wished he had the guts to yell at the two of them. _Well fine, I’ll just go to bed! I’ll go to bed alone! Nobody has to say goodnight! Nobody has to talk to me!_ He wanted to slam the door, cause a scene, throw a tantrum. He just wanted a little goddamn attention.

Instead, he quietly closed the door, shuffled back towards his bed, and threw himself on top of the covers, arms curling around his pillow in a pathetic attempt at simulating human contact. If his mom was here, this wouldn’t happen.

His eyes darted back towards the shut door, blinking away tears. She’d always come in his room to say goodnight and maybe read a story. He wasn’t too old for that, like some of his friends. Hearing a story was better than reading it; words on paper were harder than words in your ears. His mom had a good reading voice, and they’d share big words, the words the other boys would make fun of him for. Then she’d tell him to go to bed, and come back in an hour later to scold him for messing around on his phone under the sheets.

Normal mom stuff, really.

Clyde didn’t even bother to turn off the lamp as he tugged his sheets around his body and over his face, embarrassed by the droplets hitting the side of the pillow as he hugged it closer to his chest. It somewhat soothed the ache as he allowed himself a singular heave, mouth pressing firmly against the cushion as he fell into a fitful sleep.

The beeping of the alarm in the morning nearly sent him into a screaming fit.

Clyde scrambled for the sound, heart slamming in his chest until it was silenced. He still wasn’t used to it; his mom usually woke him up in the morning before school. It didn’t help that he was still tired despite going to bed at what his mother would have deemed a perfectly acceptable time.

“Fuck,” he groaned, slowly sitting properly, hands against his chest in an attempt to settle himself back down. His hair stuck up in all directions as he yawned, face scrunched in exhaustion before forcing himself down to the floor. Part of him just wanted to lie in bed the rest of the day, but he was sure his father wouldn’t be too thrilled if he found out. The keyword was _if;_ he probably wouldn’t even know if Clyde wasn’t aware of the school’s phone calls over unexcused absences. What a hypocrite either way, he’d have done that very thing since getting home from the funeral. He quickly dressed, brushed his teeth and grabbed whatever he could find in the pantry to snack on as he dug for his backpack in the messy coat closet near the front door.

“I’m leaving,” he called into the practically empty house. He knew Claire was already at school, and that his father would have been at work at this time if he wasn’t still in bed. He still wanted to cling to the idea that his mom would call back in a firm voice, reminding him not to be late to meet Craig and to be safe on the walk and to wear his warm mittens. He rarely listened to her.

Today, he took the mittens.

Down the snowy steps he went, careful to use the key on his backpack chain to lock the door behind him. It was a new thing his father had given him, and in any other situation he would have been excited to get such a privilege. He was older now, he was bigger, but this responsibility was out of necessity. That didn't make it fun anymore.

“Hey Clyde!” A voice called from nearby, Craig with his big puffy coat and oversized blue hat waving at him from the sidewalk. Tweek was beside him with what could barely be considered a coat, and a scarf that obviously didn’t belong to him. Clyde knew Craig snuck him warm things all the time in the winter months, but he never could understand why Tweek didn’t just get his own. Maybe he was poor. He just didn’t know, and it wasn’t his business to pry. His mother had taught him not to pry.

“Hey,” Clyde called back, shuffling down from the porch. “Thanks for waiting up.”

“You’re usually a lot earlier,” Craig said, sounding somewhat bored. “We had to wait five or ten minutes or something.”

“Oh,” Clyde said, feeling a little guilty. “Well, I can’t keep track of time too well.”

“You used to be able to.”

Clyde paused, feeling his mouth gape open like a fish. He closed it. That was rude. “Well, things are different now.” He didn’t mean to sound so cold and defensive, but he crossed his arms across his chest with the excuse that it was too cold. Snow kicked up around their feet as they walked towards the school.

“You always say that,” Craig muttered, pulling his jacket a little tighter around his neck. “You’ve been a real killjoy lately.”

Tweek had been mostly silent, and he usually was on the walk, but he shot Craig an awkward look. “He’s upset,” he said bluntly, giving him a little nudge. “He’s upset and you shouldn’t be so mean.”

“Whatever, it’s fine,” Clyde insisted, but something about Tweek’s empathetic gaze was a little nice. There was something in his eyes that Clyde could only describe as warm. “I’ll be fine.”

“Are you _sure_ you’re fine?” Tweek asked, but it was in that special tone of voice that Clyde had learned to hate. It was the way you spoke to someone when you knew they weren’t fine, but you want to feel like you helped by asking anyway. Every adult had used that tone of voice on him when they’d seen him, how sorry they were for his loss. It was the worst feeling in the world.

“Yeah,” he said anyway. What a load of bullshit. For a minute he thought someone really cared.

School wasn’t much better. Clyde opted to doodle and scribble in his notebooks instead of listen to their teacher, utterly distracted and uninterested. He couldn’t even manage to pay attention to English, and that was the one thing he actually liked. It reminded him too much of his mother and her kind words about what a good writer he was going to be someday. All he could do was punish himself with the same thought over and over; _your fault, your fault, your fault._

“Hey, dumbass, the bell rang,” Craig was suddenly saying, pulling on the back of his coat as he passed him to get to the door. “We gotta hurry or the pizza’s gonna get cold.”

Pizza, right. He hadn’t packed a lunch today. He hadn’t packed a lunch in two weeks. “I’m coming,” he said, dragging himself up off the chair to get to the lunch room, through the lunch line, and to a table with his friends.

“Hey Clyde,” Token said, scooting over a little to make room. “ _How are you_?”

There it was, that terrible tone of voice again. So patronizing. He was a big kid, he could handle himself! He was fine! “Yeah,” he said instead, ignoring the question as he took a bite of soggy school pizza. Gross. His mom could make better.

“Yeah?” Craig asked. “You said you were fine this morning.”

“I am fine,” he corrected quickly. “I’m just trying to eat, Craig.”

“Of course you are,” Craig snorted, shoving half a slice in his mouth at once. Without even pausing, he continued to talk. “You don’t like school food, which is weird ‘cause I thought you liked to eat everything.”

“I just like from home better. And you’re being rude, didn’t your mom teach you to not talk with your mouth full?” He didn’t mean to be so irritable. In any other situation, he would have been joking around and stuffing his face just like his friends.

“Did yours?”

“Yeah, she did!” Clyde said, voice a little louder.

“Guys, seriously,” Token said, giving them both a look. From across the room, someone had started watching the fight in silence.

Craig ignored him completely. “She used to,” he scoffed. “She used to and now she won’t anymore. You’re just being a little bitch about it, seriously, would you lighten up?”

Clyde couldn’t take it anymore.

“Shut up!” he suddenly shouted, standing up fast enough to make the cheap plastic bench shake. “Shut up, shut up, _shut up!_ ”

The entire lunchroom was looking at him now. Crybaby. Fucking crybaby, here came the tears streaming down his face.

“You don’t understand! You’ll _never_ understand, Craig! You have all your family and everything is still okay and perfect for you!” He carefully stepped back over the seat of the bench, feeling like he couldn’t breathe. “My _mommy_ ,” he cried, feeling utterly childish in his breakdown, “is _dead_! And nothing you say is gonna change that! Nothing is gonna change how _I feel!_ ”

Before anyone could stop him, he took off running towards the bathrooms, throwing himself inside before collapsing with his back against one of the dirty walls. This was the end of the world. This was all he could take. He couldn’t even think as he sobbed into his hands, chest aching as he struggled to calm himself. It was so hard to when he felt so alone. Nobody really cared. Nobody could _possibly_ understand.

The sound of the door creaking open made Clyde freeze up, sob ending in a sharp hiccup. He didn’t dare look up from his hands, knowing it was probably some teacher or maybe Craig coming to apologize. The voice that greeted him though was completely unexpected.

“Hey.”

Clyde slowly lifted his head, eyes wide in bewilderment as none other than Eric Cartman was staring back at him. “What do _you_ want?” he demanded, immediately hiding his face again. “If you’re here to laugh at me, go ahead. Everybody else has done it enough.”

There was silence for a moment before the shuffling of feet. Cartman sat down beside him, keeping a little awkward distance between them. “Not here to laugh,” he said.

Clyde lifted his head for a second time. This was _weird_. There was no teasing, no pointing, no yelling or laughing. Just silence.

Finally, he spoke. “What Craig said was uncalled for,” Cartman said, looking straight ahead. “He shouldn’t make fun of you for what happened. It’s not your fault. You can feel upset about it if you want to.”

Clyde blinked away a few tears. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Cartman continued, picking at a ball of lint on his jacket. “And I guess… I dunno, I wanted to say something about it. I couldn’t back there though, the other guys would have said something weird.”

“Probably.”

Cartman took a deep breath. “I know it sucks when someone dies. When you don’t have someone anymore. When you only have one parent and you feel all on your own.” There was an odd waver in his voice that Clyde hadn’t heard before. Weakness he didn’t usually show.

“Really?” Clyde said again, dumbfounded.

Cartman hummed. “It’s just me and my mom, and I always knew it that way, but it felt like something was missing. Especially since she doesn’t always pay that much attention. She’s off busy doing things.” He finally looked at Clyde. “Is your dad like that?”

Clyde felt himself sigh with relief. He _did_ understand. “He’s in bed,” he said softly. “He hasn’t come out much.”

Cartman hummed again. “My mom’s like that.” A totally different way, yet all the same. Busy with distractions. Busy trying to pretend that her mistakes didn’t have consequences.

There was another pause as Clyde sniffled again. “We’re kinda the same,” he said, feeling the best he had in almost two weeks. “We’re not alone.”

“Yeah,” Cartman said, giving a small smile. “We’re not alone.” It was a comforting thought for both of them. “I got mad and I just lashed out because I thought it was your fault this whole thing happened with all the rules and stuff. That’s what everyone was saying, that it was because of you. But then I realized you were probably all messed up about it too.” For once, he wasn’t being entirely selfish. “And I thought about how I felt when I found out who my real dad was, and how he was dead and it was _my_ fault technically, and how much that sucked. I beat myself up so much over it and I couldn’t even tell anyone. So… I figured you should at least have someone.”

Clyde had always had an awkward sort of friendship with Cartman, but he couldn’t help but feel a little more respect for him than before. Without thinking he gave him an awkward hug before quickly pulling his hands away, embarrassed he’d even done it in the first place. “Um… thank you.”

Cartman didn’t say anything about it. Instead he slowly got to his feet, offering Clyde a hand. “Lunch is almost over, do you want to go back?”

Clyde took his hand, nodding. “Yeah,” he said, “I think I’m okay now.”

He could grow. He could learn.

He wasn’t alone.


End file.
